The greatest calamity that has happened to human beings is an inner division. Man has been divided, he no more functions as a unity.

This has been the greatest trick played upon man, a great conspiracy of the politicians and priests, because this is the only way to keep man a slave.

If a man starts fighting with himself then he becomes impotent to rebel; he is castrated. This is a psychological castration. His whole energy becomes involved in inner conflict. He has no more energy to fight with society, with the state, with the people, with the crowd and with all kinds of superstitions. Then he is so weak outside that he accepts. He has no more will to fight, his inner fight is too much. This is a psychological trick.

If a man is one inside he will not tolerate anything that is inhuman; he will not tolerate anything that goes against his intelligence. He will not tolerate anything that is stupid, superstitious, howsoever long its history and howsoever respectable it may have been considered in the past. The man who is one will be able to see through things, and not only able to see, he will be able to act according to his intelligence.

But man is a house divided against itself. And the way that he has been divided is so subtle that it is a!most difficult to understand, to comprehend. Many things have been condemned, and those things are things natural to man. The moment you condemn something natural you create division in yourself. You are against your own nature: the split arises. Now there is never going to be any moment of victory, because nobody can win. Neither you can win -- because you are also part of your being -- nor the thing that you are fighting against can win, because that too is part of your being.

It is like making your left and right hand fight, wrestle: nobody can be victorious because you are behind both. So it is only your energy being dissipated in an absurd, foolish fight.

My friends have to learn how to get out of this conspiracy. Accept yourself in toto. All that is natural is good, nature is good. And if there is ever a choice between nature and the moralist, choose nature and forget all about the moralist. If there is ever any fight between the natural and the ideal, drop the ideal immediately; it is worthless.

Listen to your nature, and slowly slowly you will be able to become one again. And the day one becomes one, life has a totally different meaning. It is vital, it is capable of rebelling, it is capable of asserting itself, it is capable of being on its own, it is capable of risking. And only the person who is a unity, who has integrity, will be able to reach god, because the journey is long, arduous. It needs great integrity. The people who are falling into parts cannot go on that journey. Their whole life is wasted in keeping themselves together somehow.

Sufi mystics function very esoterically, so they have discovered secret ways of being recognized. Indian mystics want isolation, they want to be away from the crowd. They move to the forest, to the hills. But even if he moves to a monastery or the forest, people become aware of him, and before long he becomes known. Silence has its own message: it is its own message, conveying many things.

Sufis have tried another method. They do not go to a monastery, they do not go to a forest or to a lonely hill; rather, they become part of ordinary life. For example, a Sufi mystic may be just a cobbler. He will be so ordinary that no one will be able to recognize that he knows something, or he is something. But one who is open to higher forces will become aware of it.

Gurdjieff used to go in search for the miraculous. He followed -- without any map, without any knowledge -- and eventually came to India, to Egypt, and to Tibet. He went on and on -- just feeling his way, not knowing where he was going -- when suddenly he would feel that a particular footpath was good. He would follow it. Sometimes the footpath would end in front of a hut, and inside would be a mystic!

When you become open to the higher, things begin to happen in a very different way. But if you are only open to the lower then you have to grope in the dark for the higher.

That groping is random, accidental. Sometimes you may come to know someone or something, but that is rare. Even if you stumble upon someone or something that could change and transform your life totally, you are not aware of it.

Even if you meet Buddha, you will not be aware that you are facing a buddha. How can you be aware of it? You are not open to the higher, so even if you do meet a buddha you will only be open to his lower possibilities. You will begin to find things to disturb you even in a buddha: Why does Buddha eat like this? Why does he sleep like that? Why is he such and such? Your lower opening will give you things to think about that do not concern his buddhahood at all, and the higher will be missed. The only thing that you will do is to look in the direction of the lower: it is such a long habit.

We believe in the lower forces, we are faithful to the lower, because only the door to the lower is open in us. If someone is condemning someone else we believe him totally; there is no need for evidence. That is why rumors become true: you can create an absolutely false rumor and then, because so many people believe it, it is possible that you yourself may begin to believe it. We are led by others. If so many people are saying something, it must be true.

The opening to the lower is habitual in us. Be aware when some lower force is pulling you.

Be a witness to it. Don't allow your mind to be open to it.

Everything that you are open to becomes deeply imprinted inside you and finally begins to work.

So be aware constantly, moment to moment. Even if something is right, true, but lower, don't be open to it. Even if you know someone is a thief, still I say: don't be open to it, because while you are focused on it, it is being imprinted within you. This habit of focusing on the lower is not good because it becomes a hindrance to the opening of the higher.

One simply cannot miss a Buddha!! Even a heartless dacoit named Unglimaar could not miss Gautama Budhha. The aura and effect of Buddha was overwhelming and disarmed the killer. Anyone who stirs your 'lower' (using Ramesh Bhai's terms) may be anything, but a Budhha!

Yes, we should take the higher road always. But, focussing on the higher does not mean that one has to turn a blind eye to the lower. Knowing a thief as a thief may help. But, regarding a thief as your guardian may make you repent later.

Jesus ignored the lower, and died on the cross. His followers may glorify His tragic death as atonement of their sins, but that can be debated. Bhagwaan Krishna, Bhagwaan Ram, Gautama Budhha, Mahatama Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda and other reformers recognized the lower, but tried to use their higher selves to overcome that. Sai Baba recognized the lower in others too, and helped them to rise above them.

The 'lower', both in self and others, needs to be recognized and conquered. If you don't, then you are helping it to reproduce and perpetuate itself. Criticism can be used constructively. So, it is up to you whether you would prefer to stay indifferent to the 'lower' or help to eradicate it. It may help to grapple with the lower, both in self and others, to reach the higher. Simply ignoring the lower may never allow you to rise above it.

Divine Will acts from each of us through service to others. In my opinion, there should be a loftier purpose than to stand higher in life, as indifferent or uninterested spectators. The goal must be to stoop down and lift others higher. In my view, that is real Bhakti: Love for Baba and His creation. So, the real challenge is to engage with the ‘lower’, and lift it to the higher plane, with utmost himility []

In this world, service often gets a selfish streak. It is done in return for something or with some material or non-material expectation. Unselfish service is marked by humility, a hard-to-find trait in this age of egoism, individualism and incivility.

God exalts the humble, and humbles the proud. Thus speaks the holy Bible. Like Baba, Jesus Christ stands out as an epitome of humility. It was his humility that made him ignore the ‘lower’ in people. If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other—-that was Jesus’s philosophy. He lived by that ideal, and died for it. Nothing in history wrenches my heart as much as the story of Jesus being put through betrayal, torture, humiliation and pain in the last few hours of his life on this earth.

I deeply love and respect Jesus for his humbleness. There can be no bigger example of forgiveness than his. His last words convey it: “God forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing”. He shouted out these words as he faded away to eternity, nailed and bleeding on the cross. My heart goes numb and cries out for him as I feel his pain. His humility and spirit of forgiveness are exemplary. But, his meekness in the face of betrayal and injustice makes me sad. He was aware about his disciple Judas’s evil intentions. Yet, he ignored it. He knew he generated animosity among the priests. Yet, he ignored it. He ignored and stayed indifferent to the manifestation of ‘lower’ in mankind. His heart-wrenching death stands out as a slap on the face of humanity and its evil tendencies.

Jesus’s followers justify his tragic death on the cross as God’s love for them. They believe that God sent His only son to die for them, for the atonement of their sins. I’m not sure how true that is. Yet, I derive great inspiration from Jesus for his spirit of forgiveness. My only regret remains his indifference and excessive tolerance for the ‘lower’ in people around him. His humility exalted him only after his death. But, personally I would have loved him more if he had stayed humbly intolerant to injustice and unfairness perpetuated against him in his lifetime.

Whatsoever the world can give to us keeps us poor. It can't make us rich; it can at the most give us a pretension of being rich. Even Alexander the Great is a beggar. Even the richest person on earth remains empty, futile, deep down, because the riches that he has accumulated are outside and the poverty is within. Your money cannot go inside you, cannot fulfill you there.You can go on piling up money outside; it will remain outside you. You will remain poor. In fact you will start feeling more poor as the money starts piling up. In comparison a poor man never feels so poor as a rich man, because of the contrast.

The really rich is one who knows God, because that is an inner experience. Only when God fills you within are you rich. Then you may have money, may not have money, it doesn't matter, it is not relevant.

Initiation into sannyas is an inquiry, an exploration, into this inner richness.

Jesus says again and again: The kingdom of God is within you. He is indicating this richness. When he says man cannot live by bread alone; he is saying that if a man lives by bread alone he does not live at all.

He only exists, he only survives -- maybe comfortably but his life has no significance, no song arises out of him. He has not been able to know anything which is really valuable.

And what is really valuable? There is only one definition: that which you can take beyond death, only that is really valuable. All else is worthless. It may have a price to it but it has no value. Things have prices but no values. Only inner experiences have values, but they don't have any price. You cannot purchase them, you cannot sell them, but you can have them. In fact you already have them, it is just that you are not aware of the fact. One has to turn in and look, and immediately one becomes rich, immediately one is an emperor.

A deer runs helter skelter in search of the scent that actually emanates from its naval. Jesus and other realized souls tell us that God's kingdom is within us. When the Beloved is inside us, why do we run outwards?

The dark veil of ignorance hides the light of divinity within. Reaching it may involve confronting ourselves. And, that confrontation could scare most of the people. We may prefer to live happily, as the ego projects a comfortable picture of us to ourselves.When we honestly peep inside our souls, we may not like what we see. Confronting our 'lower' may not be a pleasant experience. In such a scenario, running outwards is natural. Human mind is capable of weaving fantastic lies, so it does that and prevents a seeker from getting in.

When we peel the layers of our mind, just like an onion, nothing remains in the end. That nothingness is Him. But, the process of peeling our mind, to get rid of its shackles, is an arduous and a long drawn out task. It requires immense honesty, humility, patience and perseverence. So, most of the seekers get uncomfortable or impatient when they go inwards. They give up, and seek the easy way out. In a bid to maintain the comfort zone, the direction of the search is changed to the outer world. As long as they think they are doing something spiritual, it does not matter to them how they are doing it. Such is the nature of human self-deception!

The fable of six blind men and an elephant conveys it all. None of the blind men was accurate in his discription of the elephant. Depending on which part of the elephant a blind man touched, the elephant appeared to be something similar to what already existed in that man's stock of knowledge. Thus, the elephant was understood partially by each, yet the claim was made as if that was the sole truth. Inevitably, they started fighting amongst themselves regarding the reality of the elephant. One can be sympathetic to each one of them, since they were not able to grasp the entity under examination corretly and in its totality. In fact, the whole was more than the sum of its parts that each one of them had tried to understand. Only a man with vision may have made them realize the folly of their understanding.

We cannot limit God by our limited knowledge and understanding. I may have put across my personal beliefs, yet those may represent Him partially. Something that needs to be experienced directly cannot be reduced to words. In my view, spirituality is a personal journey. Everyone needs to follow his or her own path that suits the seeker the most. That is alright till we don't impose our beliefs on others, or become intolerant to the expression of their beliefs. In fact, that was the crux of Baba's teachings.

So if you want to see God, you will have to learn the art of seeing without seeing, you will have to learn the art of closing your eyes to the outside reality, to the manifest reality. You will have to close your eyes so that you can move into the unmanifest dimension.

A great mystic, Palatu, has said: Those who are blind, only they can understand me.

A rare statement, a very rare statement, I have never come across anything like it anywhere. Thousands of mystics have happened on the earth, but what Palatu says.... He is a villager: his speech is direct. He says: Unless you are blind, you will not understand what I am saying. What does he mean by blind? He means: if you know how to see WITHOUT seeing.

"DHARMA HAS NO VOICE..."

The ultimate has no voice, no language.

"... THEREFORE, ONE HEARS IT WITHOUT HEARING."

You will have to become so silent that nothing stirs in you, and then without hearing it will be heard. These are paradoxes. But the closer you come to the truth, the more paradoxical is the experience. Be prepared to encounter paradoxes. And the first paradox the disciple has to encounter is: victory through surrender. That is the first encounter, because that is how disciplehood begins. You surrender to the master -- and the rare beauty is that in that very surrender you are for the first time victorious. You become a slave to the master and in becoming a slave you are for the first time your own master. You have never been a master. And then the path is full of paradoxes.

Seeing God is not the same as living in God. In our world, there is no dearth of spiritually arrogant people. They may claim that they have seen God, in one or the other form, but that does not mean that they have become one with Him. Seeing His various manifestations does not imply that you become like Him, if not exactly Him. The act of living in God consciousness surely transforms a person, elevating him or her to the level of divinity. Then there remains no need to prove how elevated one is.

We have so much religiosity around us, but does that make people divine? Baba told us that He is in every being. So, should we bow before every being, human or non-human, that we encounter? I once touched the feet of an elderly man in a temple, thinking he was an embodiment of divinity. Later, the priest who saw me doing that admonished me for it. He had seen this man indulging in all types of ungodly practices, even though he visited the temple almost everyday. It is a paradox indeed that many ills take place behind the facade of spirituality or religiosity.

Any spiritual practice that fails to make you a better person has failed you. You may think you have seen God or you have God in you, but that does not mean that you live in God. The day this understanding dawns upon those who pride in their spiritual practices without being established in God consciousness, the world may indeed take a turn towards the better.